


Troubling Shadows

by wanderlustlover



Category: Heartwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-19
Updated: 2009-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-03 09:07:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/pseuds/wanderlustlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A drabble from Heartwood, a game that never got very far off the ground it was being built. A momentary reflection about the use of gods and monsters by the hands of men.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Troubling Shadows

Troubling Shadows

 

"Hey, bubble-head," she heard Stratel call out before the ball slammed the wire fencing only an inch from her face. The fence shook forcefully and she pulled her hand from the twining wire as the electrical current raced through it.

Wringing her tingling hands, she gave him a wry expression but nodded to the building beyond their rooftop. Her voice was hushed, but cynical when she finally said,

"That's going to be one of those centers."

He'd gone running for the ball, but she hadn't missed the rolling eyes. He turned bouncing the glowing ball from blackened hand to blackened hand, so fast it didn't seem like it touched his finger tips before it was moving again. "Armies crawl, cities fall -- Trenchies care not at all."

"Maybe we should," she retorted, slightly annoyed, a hand rising to rub at the sweat-drenched white hair which stopped at the nape of her neck. Looking up through the wire; their building was a low-rise next to its spiking growth of near two hundred floors. Not counting the possible half again as many under ground.

"What of it, Kein?" Stratel asked, in a rushed breath.

Spinning around faster than could be expected or explained, she swung an arm out, hand collided with the ball that there was no way she could have heard or seen coming. But such things weren't strange when it came to Kein even when she refused to become a Deibel player.

"My mother used to say," she started, violet eyes darting with the balls movements. "That god's shouldn't be chained, Stratel."

The ball slammed the ground, then a fence wall, and another, changing colors and making a loud high screeching sound each time. Deibel was a Trenchie game. A forgotten game for a forgotten children in forgotten places. Hard to play. Harder to be good at.

Stratel practiced all time. It was in how he ran and still only just made slamming the low ball back up when it came to him, causing him to tumble and rolling back up to stand. Hitting back with his words at the same moment, he laughed harshly; "Your mother also tried to make us eat dung beetle pies. Her thoughts weren't exactly sacrosanct."

Kein ran forward, the black shirt clung to her back soaked, even as she twisted to hit the ball with the back of her hand to another wall. Her lips pursed determinedly at his words when she hit, but she shrugged carelessly during his glance before he was moving again. "Still doesn't make it right."

"They're not gods," he said, finishing it with something garbled, swearing, as he missed the ball and it bounces across the court. "You know that, Kein. There are no gods. It's all mutual science now in their world since the veil was cracked."

She frowned slightly as her eyes drew back to the building beyond them. It settled on the high corner, where the wind blew too hard, where the shadows danced before her eyes.

"I think the sun has fried you into a bubble-head, Ke. Maybe we should go in before the Brothers have a chance to detect our field," he said, the annoyance rising in his tone, as he threw the ball at her. He wanted to play; her distraction wasn't helpful, even more unhelpful was her being perfect at Deibel even when she still didn't care.

That was Kein.

She was just lucky.

Annoying so.

Which was why she caught the ball with flared fingers, and held it, regarding its electromagnetic-changing flare of insubstantial energy before she looked back at the building. The ball collapsed into a chip in her hand but she didn't seem to notice it anymore.

"A relationship that involves chains and bonds is never a mutual one, Stratel" she said, watching the shadow at the top of the building that she knew her friend didn't see and didn't see sitting there as though it, too, was watching her. "Never a free one."


End file.
